Emergency departments have been busier than ever during the pandemic. Doctors are seeing a surge of COVID patients on top of other people who come in with serious illnesses and trauma. Dr. Abhishekh Govind is the medical director of the emergency department at Franklin Memorial Hospital in Farmington, and he recorded a series of audio diaries explaining what his job has been like in recent weeks. Here's his story.
Note: This transcript has been lightly edited for clarity.
Dr. Abhishekh Covind: I remember when I first started, I would leave work excited to come back. But recently, over the last few years, that's become rare and you end up leaving your shift, not wanting to come back.
That's part of what makes COVID so bad is that the healthcare system was already broken. And to add the patient load that we're seeing with COVID on top of that is just unbearable. I've never felt more like, hopeless. I think the word is hopeless.
I've got kids and a family that I need to take care of. But it's just this hopelessness that if things don't get better, there's no way I can do this for much longer. And I think a lot of my colleagues have expressed that concern.
Today is Friday the 21st of January. And it is about 1pm. And today was not my clinical shift. But I had to come in to do extra work because we've just been so busy.
We tried to create a surge plan where we could almost double the number of patients that we could we admit here. But the problem is that we don't have the staff to be able to do that. Even if we could create the beds, we don't have the staff.
I think this is one of the things that's really difficult for people who aren't vaccinated to understand is that you're taking a chance as to whether or not you're going to get sick, and how sick you're going to get. And then when you do come to get medical help, we don't have the manpower or the resources to be able to provide the help that some of these patients need.
Come into my shift on a day where I should be off. It's my daughter's birthday today. As providers, nurses, doctors, techs, we all make sacrifices every day. It's nice sometimes to think that maybe the people we take care of would care about us enough to help us out.
Today is Monday, the 24th of January. And it's well after nine o'clock at night. I just completed my day shift, which started at 7 a.m. this morning.
Sometimes I feel like maybe I have an anxiety attack before coming into work. But it didn't feel that way this morning. I think I was just sleepy.
There've been so many sick people. I think at the end of a shift like this I'm just so mentally drained. You know, I just realized that I haven't eaten all day either. I've just been going and going and going. I think I had half a sandwich or something. I've got a few hours before I get up at 5 a.m. and then do it again.
This is Dr. Abi Govind, and this is my audio diary for January 31, 2022.
We've already had two COVID patients today and we've just had a third roll in. Right now, with everything going on, I don't know what other option I have but to keep going.
You know, I do this for my family, especially my two little girls. Because I've always wondered, or I've always wished I could leave them a better world than I was given. And it's hard to believe that things are going to go that way with everything going on in the world. But we've got to try. That's why I keep going, we've just got to try and make things better.
